Searching for IC answers with Google

This morning I read about a new feature from Google called conversational search. It enables you to speak rather than type your query and I decided to give it a go.

So what do you need to know?
Well, it’s just gone live and is available on Chrome. Google unveiled it last week and has rolled it out in the last 24 hours. Conversational search has voice recognition and natural language understanding and is the first step because other functionality will be rolled out soon.

Google had voice search before but conversational search has been described as a “major upgrade.” You access it by choosing the microphone button situated at the right hand side of the search box.

I decided to give it a go and have recorded my findings via my iPhone and uploaded to YouTube – you can see the results below. It recognised most of my query (and my Essex/London accent) and I asked it ‘What is internal communication?’

The first result came back as ‘What is in 1000 communication’ and the second one came back identically. On the third attempt it brought up the recognisable Google results for the query.

The answers are another blog post in its own right! Back in 2009 I organised a comms flashmob to update the definition of internal communication on Wikipedia. The rules around Wikipedia editing have since changed (check out this guidance from CIPR for a comprehensive overview) and it does irk me when if you search for internal communication images you get a whole load of telephone wires!

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a glossary on my blog for a while because search results indicate many readers find their way here by searching ‘what is internal communication’ – perhaps that’s something I’ll chat through with members of @theICcrowd at #thebigyak unconference next month.